The CEO of the TV channel “Dozhd” (Rain) Natalia Sindeeva informed the RNS edition, that the channel had filed a lawsuit against the OTT TV provider DIVAN.TV.
According to the arbitration court case file, the lawsuit was filed by the TV channel with the Moscow Arbitration Court on 9 February. The “Dozhd” intends to recover RUR 817 thousand from DIVAN.TV (about USD 14 thousand).
According to Mrs. Sindeeva, the matter of the lawsuit is an illegal distribution of the “Dozhd”’s content within the OTT platform.
“The TV channel’s lawsuit against DIVAN.TV was filed for the failure of the video service’s contractual obligations, that is, for a debt collection under the contract, claiming to suspend illegal distribution of the channel’s products”, as Natalia Sindeeva stated.
DIVAN.TV does not deny the conflict, proceeding from changes in channel’s operation conditions on the Ukrainian market for different operators. However, the service is looking forward to settling that dispute on an amicable basis.
“We are very sorry that it came to the court. The conflict with our partner TV channel “Dozhd” developed in the past, due to changes in the TV channel’s operation conditions on the Ukrainian market for different operators. Consequently, it resulted in some discriminatory and non-competitive conditions, which led to financial and reputation losses of our company. We are confident that we would manage settling that conflict, which developed in Ukraine in the past, and we would continue our cooperation all over the world”, as commented on to the Mediasat by Arkadiy Kanyuka, Executive Director at DIVAN.TV.
Let us recall that last month the National Television and Radio Broadcasting Council of Ukraine removed the “Dozhd” from the List of Foreign Broadcasts, the content of which meets the requirements of the European Convention on Transfrontier Television and the laws of Ukraine.
In pursuance of the resolution of the regulatory authority, DIVAN.TV notified its Ukrainian subscribers about giving up broadcasting “Dozhd” from February 17. A relevant message was posted on the service’s web site and dated from January 16.
